The article touches on the RFID technology used in many things from inventory tracking to credit cards, passports, ID cards & enhanced drivers licenses all vulnerable to being skimmed.

As Harris says:

“We were concerned about our own privacy and cards being vulnerable. That’s what made us investigate further as we could see people could skim or hack you and we discovered how easy it is to do.”

In the piece touched on some of the history of this technology,

RFID technology has been around since the cold war, originally a spy tool of the KGB. It lies dormant until powered by radio waves. The KGB originally planted these chips in embassies in West Berlin, which explains why when the embassy was searched for bugs, none were ever found. The device would lay dormant until a KGB operative, sitting outside in a van, pointed a reader at the wall in which the bug was hidden, usually when important meetings occurred.

Harris went on to say:

“It gets worse. With the latest smartphones being Near Field Communication (NFC) enabled they allow you to transmit data over open airwaves via your phone. Team that with free software and it turns your phone into a credit card or ePassport skimmer. Now not only hardened criminals can start skimming, but any opportunist with a smartphone.”

The article also cited A Wired Magazine article that showed how easy it is to be skimmed shown on stage at a recent DefCon hacker conference which is held every summer in Las Vegas.

Harris smiled knowingly when told about the Defcon situation.

That’s why we developed Armourcard. It is a similar shape to a credit card and fits in your wallet. It doesn’t try to block or shield the RFID reader trying to send a signal or communicate with your cards like other available devices. As soon as an RFID reader tries to interrogate your card or ePassport, Armourcard instantly powers up. It uses its own power source so it doesn’t rely on convection to power and it puts out a jamming force-field a jamming signal that blocks the frequency these readers communicate over which is 13.56 MHZ.